


Basics

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Fighters and Lovers [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 13:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13272411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Rodney on the basics of life, the universe, and everything: the arm bar, and human dignity.





	Basics

Rodney didn’t actually hear the insult. He was too busy trying too hard not to think too hard so he could actually function in the cage.

But the man spat something - garbled around his mouthguard - and sharp cries rose up from both corners, and Rodney was startled by the sheer  _ fury _ in Jack’s voice, and then he was down on the ground and his opponent was raining blows own on him. Rodney recovered enough to catch the guy’s arm, hoist his legs up, and suck the guy in for an arm bar.

The guy saw it coming, stood up with all of Rodney’s weight on his arm, and slammed him back down on the canvas.

All the air rushed out of Rodney’s lungs.

And then Jack was between them, peeling Rodney off the guy’s arm and shoving the guy backward.

“I said  _ break!” _

The guy stumbled back toward the fence.

Rodney flopped back onto the canvas, sucking in deep gulps of air.

Jack knelt down beside him. “You all right?”

Rodney blinked, startled by the concern and anger on Jack’s face. He spat out his mouth guard, tucked it into the waistband of his fight shorts like he’d seen John do a hundred times. “Apart from the physical pain of being slammed on the mat, fine. I almost had him, you know. Got it locked in real tight.”

Jack was on his feet and across the cage, right up in the other guy’s face.

Kavanagh, or something. Had a stupid ponytail. 

“That kind of behavior is absolutely unacceptable in this gym and you know it. Get out,” Jack snarled.

Kavanagh huffed. “Whatever. He’s fine. Look at him.”

Rodney pushed himself to his feet, nodding. “Yeah. I’m fine. We can reset, go again.”

But then the cage door swung open and John, Teyla, and Evan rushed to Rodney’s side.

But Jack’s tone brooked no argument. “Get out.”

Kavanagh rolled his eyes. “Fine. Whatever.” He headed for the cage door.

As he passed, he caught Rodney’s eye, and he mouthed  _ fairy. _

Rodney’s blood ran cold.

John lunged at Kavanagh. Teyla and Evan caught him, held him back.

Jack was on Kavanagh’s heels all the way out of the cage, down the steps, to the sidelines while he grabbed his gym bag, while he cleaned out his locker, out the front door.

“Don’t come back,” Jack said.

And finally Rodney understood why Jack had stopped the fight. Kavanagh had been out to  _ hurt _ him. Injure him.

Teyla put a hand on Rodney’s shoulder. “Are you all right? How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” Rodney said blankly, though he wasn’t quite sure it was true.

John pulled Rodney close. “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Rodney said. “I mean - no more than expected from sparring? I think.”

Evan crowded close, concern marring his brow. “As soon as he said that I was sure you were dead. Good job with that arm bar. Thank the stars Jack got in there as fast as he did.”

“I didn’t even hear him say it,” Rodney said. “I was just - focused on the fight.”

“Good,” John said. “Staying in the zone is good. But - your safety comes first. Sometimes you need to listen to what they say, in case they’re going to deliberately go for a cheap and illegal shot.”

Rodney blinked, a little dazed. “Do you think he was going for an illegal shot?”

“Don’t care whether he was or not,” Jack said. “That kind of attitude is unacceptable.” 

“Let’s call it for today,” John said. “C’mon, Rodney. Let’s go home.” 

Rodney nodded, let John lead him back to the locker room so both of them could change. John shouldered both of their gym bags, and together they set off down the street toward home. Rodney was still kind of dazed. He’d been uncaring about some of the snide remarks he’d dealt with growing up, because his sexuality was irrelevant to his brilliance, and his brilliance was all that mattered. No one had ever threatened his physical safety over it.

John had been on the receiving end of a lot of negativity when Rodney had unintentionally outed him after his fight with Cameron Mitchell, but everyone at Atlantis Gym and plenty of other fighters - including Cameron Mitchell and his gym - had rallied around him, been supportive, and hordes of fans had been as well.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” John asked. He unlocked the front door, and Pauli was waiting for them, which was unlike him, because he never deigned to greet anyone.

Pauli wound himself around and around Rodney’s ankles. Of course. The imperious feline was hungry.

John toted their gym bags to the laundry room to unload their damp workout clothes and let the rest of their gear - like their gloves and padded helmets - air out. Rodney headed into the kitchen to fill Pauli’s food and water bowls, and then he fixed himself a glass of water and drained it, and he did it again, and again, and again, and -

“Rodney!”

The glass slipped from his fingers, shattered on the kitchen tile.

“Don’t move,” John said. He ran to the front door, toed on his sneakers. Then he dashed back into the kitchen, scooped up Pauli and settled Pauli across his shoulders so he wouldn’t get glass in his paws, and grabbed the broom and dustpan to sweep up the glass.

Rodney stayed pressed against the counter, staring down at his own shaking hands. 

John finished cleaning up, and then he sent Pauli to his cat bed in the laundry room, and he caught Rodney’s wrist, towed him out of the kitchen and down the hall to the bedroom, through the bedroom, and into the massive master bathroom that Rodney had insisted on having when they were house shopping. It had a giant jacuzzi tub with jets. John turned the water on, fished around under the sink for the gaudily pink but citrus-free chamomile bath bombs Madison had made for them for Christmas last year. He set the bath bomb on the edge of the tub, and then he turned to Rodney.

“You’re okay. You’re safe. I’m here for you. Jack is here for you. Evan and Teyla are here for you. No one’s going to hurt you, all right? Not while I’m around.”

Rodney blinked, nodded. “I know. You’ve rescued me before. It’s how we met. I just thought -”

“Thought the world was less ugly than this,” John said softly.

“I was never an optimist.”

“You don’t have to be an optimist to expect to be treated like a human being.” John pulled him close, held him tightly.

Rodney clung to him, still shaking. Why was he so upset? He hadn’t been this upset after he’d been mugged. He hadn’t been this upset during lasers misfiring in the lab or accidental explosions or anything else infinitely more life-threatening.

John pulled back, peeled off his clothes and kicked them in the vague direction of the laundry hamper. Then he reached out and began undressing Rodney. It was gentle, soothing, without request or expectation. Rodney helped, moving his limbs this way and that, and then John helped him into the tub. There was enough room in the tub for the two of them to stretch out without touching, but this time John sat back and Rodney sat between his legs, resting against his chest.

“Your turn,” John said, and Rodney reached out, tipped the bath bomb into the water.

John used his toes to turn off the tap, and they both watched as the bath bomb fizzled out of existence.

They both lay in the warm water, feeling it seep into their bones. A cold ball of ice had settled, low and heavy, in Rodney’s gut once he realized what Kavanagh had done, what his intentions were during that sparring match, and finally it started to dissipate.

John traced his fingertips lightly over Rodney’s shoulders. “You’re starting to bruise. Where you hit the mat.” Where Kavanagh had slammed him to the mat to try to shake off the arm bar.

“You know I bruise easily. It doesn’t hurt that much.”

“I’ll rub some ointment on it when we get out,” John said. “You were looking good out there, you know. Sucked in to that arm bar really fast. Got your positioning without having to think about it. You’re getting better at not thinking during your matches.”

“Am I? Perhaps I was too good at it today.” Rodney stared down at his hands where they rested on his knees. They’d finally stopped shaking.

John said nothing.

“Here’s the thing,” Rodney said. “I don’t think people have to like my life choices. I don’t like most of other people’s life choices, and I even occasionally exercise your country’s constitutional right to free speech to express my opinion about how poor their life choices are. People have their own opinions. We aren’t required to like everything everyone else does. But I -” He cut himself off, shook his head.

John pressed a kiss to Rodney’s shoulder blade. “You deserve to be given basic human dignity.”

It was Rodney’s turn to say nothing.

John pressed another kiss to Rodney’s damp skin, again a comfort instead of a request. “So, how are things at the lab?”

Usually that was easy to talk about, but it took Rodney a moment to shift gears. Then he remembered how a new intern had failed to pay attention to the labeling on the refrigerators (Experiments versus Sustenance) and nearly drank one of Cadman’s brightly-colored but highly toxic experimental formulas for atomic layer deposition on the surface of ZPM crystal containers to allow microfabrication right onto the surface of said containers. There’d been screaming, panic, and undressing the poor intern and shoving him under the emergency shower.

In the intern’s defense, Cadman had left the solution in a giant martini glass.

The intern’s attempt to get blind drunk in the middle of the work day said poor things about his stress tolerance.

When the water started to get cold, John got out first, snagged a towel, dried himself off quickly so he wouldn’t drip on the floor, and then he went and fetched a towel for Rodney. While Rodney was toweling himself off, John set the tub to draining, and then he cleared the throw pillows off of the bed (a housewarming gift from Jeannie; Pauli used them as his alternate thrones when he wished to grace the people bed with his presence) to make space.

Rodney crawled onto the bed and arranged himself as comfortably as he could while facedown.

“Yeah, that’s a pretty nasty bruise,” John said. 

Rodney closed his eyes, listened to John’s soft footfalls in the bathroom, the sound of him rummaging in the medicine cabinet. The mattress sank beneath John’s weight a few moments later, and Rodney was startled by the sharp menthol scent of the bruise balm that Miko and Evan both swore by, some kind of traditional Japanese recipe that Miko made herself, had made since her college judo days.

John rubbed his hands together to warm them up, and then he began smoothing the ointment over Rodney’s back and shoulders.

Rodney closed his eyes, hummed happily at the sensation. He loved John’s hands on his bare skin pretty much all the time. Even though he was in pretty good shape (not the same shape as any of the professional fighters at the gym, of course), hard sparring always made him tired and sore. 

When the sweep of John’s hands across his skin turned into him digging his thumbs into the knots at the base of his neck, Rodney moaned.

“You been standing up and stretching every couple hours at your desk like Teyla tells you?” John asked.

Rodney had no words, because John’s hands felt so good.

“If you did that, your head would hurt less,” John said. He knew Rodney’s body almost as well as Rodney knew it by now, knew how to work the knots out with just the right amount of pressure, walking the fine line between pleasure and pain.

Rodney remembered the first time John had offered to rub him down after a particularly grueling workout at the gym.  _ Relax. Play dead. _ So he inhaled deeply, willed his body to relax on the exhale.

“That’s more like it.”

John worked out from Rodney’s neck, first down toward one shoulder, then the other. Then he worked out those knots that seemed to be  _ beneath _ Rodney’s shoulder blades, then down to the small of his back.

John stroked one hand over the curve of Rodney’s behind, then paused. “What are you in the mood for?”

Rodney considered. “Tonight let’s just - let’s just be.”

John nodded, pressed a kiss to Rodney’s hip, and then the bed dipped again as he stretched out beside Rodney. He snuggled close to share warmth, and together they lay there, dozed.

“What do you think you’ll do, when your fight career is done?” Rodney asked.

John hummed against Rodney’s skin, thinking. “I’m only thirty-five. I’ve got at least five more years in me.”

“But after that five years? Will you coach, like Jack and Daniel?”

“No. I’ll come be your human calculator in the lab.”

Rodney opened one eye. “Really?”

“Yeah.” John snuggled even closer, eyes still closed, features soft with contentment. “You know what I’d like to do in this next year?”

“What?” 

“Marry you.”

Rodney opened both eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

Rodney rolled to face John. “So about that backrub you started earlier. I might be in the mood for a less - docile conclusion to it.”

John opened his eyes, smiled. “Anything you want.” And he leaned in for a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Also written for HC_Bingo Prompt “backrubs/massages”.


End file.
